Arab American National Museum: Museum Analysis

In week five, in the class of Introduction to Humanities there was information that was presented to us by The Creative Impulse about the art forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I knew for our class discussion that there needed to be a picture of Islamic art, so that we could discuss the art of that period. Consequently, I went to the Arab American National Museum for some examples of Islamic art that I could photograph. The museum is only open Wednesday thru Saturday and is closed for the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Despite the limitation of the days, there were several staff and patrons of the museum. The outside of the building belies how wonderfully big the museum is and the amazing colors of the floors. The front of the museum looks rather modern with just a hint of Islamic Temple art in the middle of the building, and you can see a white colored dome with what looks to be towards the middle of the building. The windows display pieces of clothing that an Islamic woman would wear called …show more content…
Since Islam prohibited the use of human and animal forms, the geometric styles became very popular. The pottery became distinguishable by region because of what colors were being used. In what is called modern day Syria the colors were blues and greens together in geometric patterns. The cups, bowls, and serving ware were considered plain but useable for every day events. Despite the idea of being plain, it was still considered an art form to have a geometric design on the everyday serving ware. However, the artists that were held in most high esteem were the calligrapher. The calligraphers wrote four different forms of writing, which helped people to understand what type of papers they had based on the form of writing, which could be Kufic, Muhaqqaq, Nahki, and Thuluth. The museum had tools of the calligrapher as well, which had been influenced by the Islamic